Rambles and Studies in Greece

by J. P. Mahaffy

This was done in early days with perfect good faith. During the decline of religion there were of course many cases of corruption and of partiality, [pg 291]and, indeed, the whole style and dignity of the oracle gradually decayed with the decay of Greece itself. Presently, when crowds came, and states were extremely jealous of the right of precedence in inquiring of the god, it was found expedient to give responses every day, and this was done to private individuals, and even for trivial reasons. So also the priests no longer took the trouble to shape the responses into verse; and when the Phocians in the sacred war (355–46 B. C.) seized the treasures, and applied to military purposes some ten thousand talents, the shrine suffered a blow from which it never recovered. Still, the quantity of splendid votive offerings which were not convertible into ready money made it the most interesting place in Greece, next to Athens and Olympia, for lovers of the arts: and the statues, tripods, and other curiosities described there by Pausanias, give a wonderful picture of the mighty oracle even in its decay.[113] The greatest sculptors, painters, and architects had lavished their labor upon the buildings. Though Nero had carried off five hundred bronze statues, the traveller estimated the remaining works of art at three thousand, and yet these seem to have been almost all statues, and not to have included tripods, pictures, and other gifts. The Emperor Constantine brought away (330 A. D.) a great number to adorn [pg 292]his capital—more especially the bronze tripod, formed of three intertwined serpents, with their heads supporting a golden vessel, which Pausanias, the Spartan King, had dedicated as the leader of Greece to commemorate the great victory over Xerxes. This tripod (which was found standing in its place at Constantinople by our soldiers in 1852) contains the list of states according to the account of Herodotus, who describes its dedication, and who saw it at Delphi.

When the Emperor Julian, the last great champion of paganism, desired to consult the oracle on his way to Persia, in 362 A. D., it replied: “Tell the king the fair-wrought dwelling has sunk into the dust: Phœbus has no longer a shelter or a prophetic laurel, neither has he a speaking fountain; the fair water is dried up.” Thus did the shrine confess, even to the ardent and hopeful Julian, that its power had passed away, and, as it were by a supreme effort, declared to him the great truth which he refused to see—that paganism was gone for ever, and a new faith had arisen for the nations of the Roman Empire.

About the year 390, Theodosius took the god at his word, and closed the oracle finally. The temple—with its cella of 100 feet—with its Doric and Ionic pillars—with its splendid sculptures upon the pediments—sank into decay and ruin. The walls and porticos tumbled down the precipitous cliffs; the [pg 293]prophetic chasm was filled up by the Christians with fear and horror; and, as if to foil any attempt to recover from ruins the site and plan, the modern Greeks built their miserable hamlet of Castri upon the spot; so that it is only among the walls and foundations laid bare by earthquakes that we can now seek for marble capitals and votive inscriptions.

One or two features are still unchanged. The three fine springs, to which Delphi doubtless owed its first selection for human habitation, are still there—Castalia, of which we have spoken; Cassotis, which was led artificially into the very shrine of the god; and Delphussa, which was, I suppose, the water used for secular purposes by the inhabitants. The stadium, too, a tiny racecourse high above the town, in the only place where they could find a level 150 yards, is still visible; and we see at once what the importance of games must have been at a sacred Greek town, when such a thing as a stadium should be attempted here.[114] The earliest competitions had been in music—that is, in playing the lyre, in recitation, and probably in the composition of original poems; but presently the physical contests of Olympia began to outdo the splendor of Delphi. Moreover, the Spartans would not compete in minstrelsy, which they liked and criticised, but left to professional artists. Accordingly, the priests of [pg 294]Delphi were too practical a corporation not to widen the programme of their games, and Pindar has celebrated the Pythian victors as hardly second to those at the grand festival of Elis.

There is yet one more element in the varied greatness of Delphi. It was here that the religious federation of Greece—the Amphictyony of which we hear so often—held its meetings alternately with the meetings at the springs of Thermopylæ. When I stood high up on the stadium at Delphi, the great scene described by the orator Æschines came fresh upon me, when he looked upon the sacred plain of Krissa, and called all the worshippers of the god to clear it of the sacrilegious Amphissians, who had covered it with cattle and growing crops. The plain, he says, is easily surveyed from the place of meeting—a statement which shows that the latter cannot have been in the town of Delphi: for a great shoulder of the mountain effectually hides the whole plain from every part of the town.

The Pylæa, or place of assembly, was, however, outside, and precisely at the other side of this huge shoulder, so that what Æschines says is true; but it is not true, as any ordinary student imagines, that he was standing in Delphi itself. He was, in fact, completely out of sight of the town, though not a mile from it. There is no more common error than this among our mere book scholars—and I daresay there are not many who realize the existence of this [pg 295]suburban Pylæa, and its situation close to, but invisible from, Delphi. It certainly never came home to me till I began to look for the spot from which Æschines might have delivered his famous extempore address.

When we rode round to the real place we found his words amply verified. Far below us stretched the plain from Amphissa to Kirrha, at right angles with the gorge above which Delphi is situated. The river-courses of the Delphic springs form, in fact, a regular zigzag. When they tumble from their great elevation on the rocks into the valley, they join the Pleistus, running at right angles toward the west; when this torrent has reached the plain, it turns again due south, and flows into the sea at the Gulf of Kirrha. Thus, looking from Pylæa, you see the upper part of the plain, and the gorge to the north-west of it, where Amphissa occupies its place in a position similar to the mouth of the gorge of Delphi. The southern rocks of the gorge over against Delphi shut out the sea and the actual bay; but a large rich tract, covered with olive-woods, and medlars, and oleanders, stretches out beneath the eye—verily a plain worth fighting for, and a possession still more precious, when it commanded the approach of pilgrims from the sea; for the harbor duties and tolls of Kirrha were once a large revenue, and their loss threatened the oracle with poverty. This levying of tolls on the pilgrims to Delphi be[pg 296]came quite a national question in the days of Solon; it resulted in a great war, led by the Amphictyonic Council. Kirrha was ruined, and its land dedicated to the god, in order to protect the approach from future difficulties. So this great tract was, I suppose, devoted to pasture, and the priests probably levied a rent from the people who choose to graze their cattle on the sacred plain. The Amphissians, who lived, not at the seaside, but at the mountain side of the plain, were never accused of robbing or taxing the pilgrims; but having acquired for many generations the right of pasture, they advanced to the idea of tilling their pastures, and were undisturbed in this privilege till the mischievous orator, Æschines, for his own purposes, fired the Delphians with rage, kindled a war, and so brought Philip into Greece. These are the historical circumstances which should be called to mind by the traveller, who rides down the steep descent from Delphi to the plain, and then turns through the olive-woods to the high road to Itea, as the port of Delphi is now called.

A few hours brought us to the neighborhood of the sea. The most curious feature of this valley, as we saw it, was a long string of camels tied together, and led by a small and shabby donkey. Our mules and horses turned with astonishment to examine these animals, which have survived here only, though introduced by the Turks into many parts of Greece.

The port of Itea is one of the stations at which the Greek coasting steamers now call, and, accordingly, the place is growing in importance. If a day’s delay were allowed, to let tourists ride up to the old seat of the oracle, and if the service were better regulated so as to compete in convenience with the train journey from Patras to Athens, I suppose no traveller going to Greece would choose any other route. For he would see all the beautiful coasts of Acarnania and Ætolia on the one side, and of Achaia on the other; he could then take Delphi on his way, and would land again at Corinth. Here again, a day, or part of a day, should be allowed to see the splendid Acro-Corinthus, of which more in another chapter. The traveller might thus reach Athens with an important part of Greece already visited, and have more leisure to turn his attention to the monuments and curiosities of that city and of Attica. It is worth while to suggest these things, because most men who go to Greece find, as I did, that, with some better previous information, they could have economized both time and money. I can also advise that the coasting steamer should be abandoned at Itea, from which the traveller can easily get horses to Delphi and Arachova, and from thence to Chæronea, Lebadea, and through Thebes to Athens. So he would arrive there by a land tour, which would make him acquainted with all Bœotia. He might next go by train from Athens to Corinth [pg 298](stopping on the way at Megara), and then into the Peloponnese; going first to Mycenæ and Argos, and then taking another steamer round to Sparta, and riding up through Laconia, Arcadia, and Elis, so as to come out at Patras, or by boat to Zante, where the steamer homeward would pick him up. Of course, special excursions through Attica, and to the islands, are not included in this sketch, as they can easily be made from Athens.

But surely, no voyage in Greece can be called complete which does not include a visit to the famous shrine of Delphi, where the wildness and ruggedness of nature naturally suggest the powers of earth and air, that sway our lives unseen—where the quaking soil and the rent rocks speak a strength above the strength of mortal man—and where a great faith, based upon his deepest hopes and fears, gained a moral empire over all the nation, and exercised it for centuries, to the purifying and the ennobling of the Hellenic race. The oracle is long silent, the priestess forgotten, the temple not only ruined, but destroyed; and yet the grand responses of that noble shrine are not forgotten, nor are they dead. For they have contributed their part and added their element to the general advancement of the world, and to the emancipation of man from immorality and superstition into the true liberty of a good and enlightened conscience.